Its own investigation into the hotel sector (admittedly, a small sample size of just over 50) found a drop from 54% in 2012 to 34% in 2013 with the number of properties having partial F-Booking facilities.

Site traffic emanating from hotel fan pages has also dropped over the same period from 5% to a lowly 2%, L2 found.

Kevin May is editor and a co-founder of Tnooz. He was previously editor of UK-based magazine Travolution for nearly four years and web editor of Media Week UK from 2003 to 2005.

He has also worked in regional newspapers (Essex Enquirer) and started his career in journalism at the Police Gazette at New Scotland Yard in London. He has a degree in criminology and a postgraduate diploma in magazine journalism.

jj sheppard

I wouldn’t discount the importance of Google+ Local & Google NOW from a mobile, and localised perspective, Fb has nothing to really touch this at the moment in my view, and I’m not so sure graph search will disrupt Google’s already impressive mobile assets.

Given there are already baked in to Android allowing for seamless UX between Google apps, and on the fastest growing mobile o/s, means you don’t need to log into a 3rd party app to perform searches, layer a decent booking engine into G+ local and you also have a powerful asset to leverage for your respective property.

Personal reviews and +1`s are now filtering through from circles and friends, and Google has stated they will be filtering out (not sure how) dubious looking reviews, adding more credibility to an important search signal.

Dont be fooled by the Google+ ghost town link bait stories either, the growth trajectory is going off the scale at the moment,some of it organic, and some slightly forced, however in my view its not a case of if, but when, with regards to business` joining Google + its not all about a social network, its also the benefit you`ll get in organic search engine page results,

Will our already fairly well established habits of using Google as our primary search mode change to Facebook ,with the advent of graph search? Will it become our first choice search route to new products and services? I’m not convinced it will, of course Fb could leverage its relationship with Tripadvisor in travel related graph search results, now that would add another interesting dimension.

As ive always said to hotel owners, you should look at social media as a profit protector (as well and many other “things”), and not as the “silver bullet” sales tool.

Facebook`s GS and Google+ these two key tool could really disrupt the OTA`s particularly from a mobile perspective, opening up direct booking channels driven by your social media.

Embedding a booking “widget” into your Facebook page will help facilitate this in my view, of course I foresee some kind of Fb meta search and booking engine coming along (or perhaps a collab with TripAdvisor)

However if ultimately reducing commission charges while holding occupancy is the net result, that equals profit protection, and that is a big win for many!

jj… bingo and well stated. I hadn’t even thought of the OTA angle… that’s a great point!
Additionally, from a simple search standpoint, I’d regard a recommendation from a friend or connection “more credible” thank those from a simple Google search.
Obviously, there are a lot of kinks to be worked-out, but the potential is incredible. Exciting times ahead!

jj sheppard

Cory, i`m with you on that, i smell monetisation from Fb on a grand scale.

What if Fb allowed properties to “feature” in graph search results, properties that utilised an Fb booking engine for example, one that took commission per room sold? fully linked to NFC tech so revolutionising the check process for example, and side stepping OTA`s, the more revenue going through the booking engine, the greater the presence on graph search, its a win win…..

Sandra

emre

Hi sandra,
Actually there is one you can really rely on. Booking.com has its facebook booking button application since a while. You can easily search it on fb and add it on a fanpage of a hotel where you must be an admin for the and the propery must already be bookable on booking.com. The best part is there is no fee involved, it shares the same allotment and prices that you already have on booking.com and you paay only 3% commission. İ hope my answer helps.
Regards from istannbul

Sandra

Sandra

Emre,
I can’t seem to find any information on Booking.com about this.
We are using them for all our hotels – but the one link I found seemed to be a dead link?
Are you able to point me in the right direction?